Any replacement dialers with SPEED DIAL?

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I tried aContacts, which does support speed dial, but on almost every one of my contacts it claimed that it could not find a phone number. I really miss just being able to hold a number to call someone. Anyone know of something that works?

BTW, I am aware of the ability to create shortcuts to contacts on my home screen, or in a folder on my home screen, but I just don't like that way of doing it. I am running the GDE home replacement with the "Hero" theme and it would be far easier for me to just press the phone icon (which is at the bottom of every screen now) and then just hold a button to call someone rather than navigate to the proper home screen, open a folder, then pick out the person I want to call. All of that is just not safe while driving.

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I tried aContacts, which does support speed dial, but on almost every one of my contacts it claimed that it could not find a phone number. I really miss just being able to hold a number to call someone. Anyone know of something that works?

BTW, I am aware of the ability to create shortcuts to contacts on my home screen, or in a folder on my home screen, but I just don't like that way of doing it. I am running the GDE home replacement with the "Hero" theme and it would be far easier for me to just press the phone icon (which is at the bottom of every screen now) and then just hold a button to call someone rather than navigate to the proper home screen, open a folder, then pick out the person I want to call. All of that is just not safe while driving.

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For driving - why aren't you using voice dial? "Dial John Smith Mobile" or "Call John Smith Mobile"

Another alternative, called Tap Dialer, might work for you, depending on how many numbers you want to dial...

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Not sure if its because I've been sick but the voice dialing is not accurate enough for me to use. First I have to press the listen button, then I always get a connection error, hit try again, say what I want, wait a min, then it gives me a list of matches. By contrast speed dial would just be two clicks and done.

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i just don't understand tis complaint. i'm using the gde also and you can just set one of the static buttons on the bottom to "contacts"...touch it and boom...there are your favorites....touch the green phone button by their name and pic and you're dialing them.

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Sorry, but I think you are in denial if you fail to see how it is faster (and safer) to just open the dialer and hold a button for 1 sec instead of open the dialer or contacts, go to favorties, read through the list, find the right person, and then click them to call. I've used the standard telephone keypad for 31 years and it's not like I need to look at it to use speed dial. the contacts/favorites way you suggest requires me to take my eyes off the road for 2-3 seconds at minimum, which is enough for some bad shit to happen when you are going 75mph on the beltway in houston.

Don't get me wrong, i love my droid and wouldnt go back to my BB for this alone, but I really hope I can get this traditionally basic functionality sooner than later. I've had a cell phone since I was 16 and have always used my speed dials. I've also been at the same company for 10 years now, so my speed dials have mostly stayed the same on every phone I have owned in that span...my brain is trained to flip out the phone and mash a key to get to my top 8 contacted people.

now before someone attacks me for being resistant to progress and change, know that I am all about technical advancements -- I am a high-end IT infrastructure guy (completely technical and not a manager) and am all about progress and new technology. BUT, I am also a snob when it comes to what I think are poor decisions or omissions on any user interface regardless of the platform. I think that this is one of those cases where a traditionally key feature was left out that should be there for ease of use.

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Sorry, but I think you are in denial if you fail to see how it is faster (and safer) to just open the dialer and hold a button for 1 sec instead of open the dialer or contacts, go to favorties, read through the list, find the right person, and then click them to call. I've used the standard telephone keypad for 31 years and it's not like I need to look at it to use speed dial. the contacts/favorites way you suggest requires me to take my eyes off the road for 2-3 seconds at minimum, which is enough for some bad shit to happen when you are going 75mph on the beltway in houston.

Don't get me wrong, i love my droid and wouldnt go back to my BB for this alone, but I really hope I can get this traditionally basic functionality sooner than later. I've had a cell phone since I was 16 and have always used my speed dials. I've also been at the same company for 10 years now, so my speed dials have mostly stayed the same on every phone I have owned in that span...my brain is trained to flip out the phone and mash a key to get to my top 8 contacted people.

now before someone attacks me for being resistant to progress and change, know that I am all about technical advancements -- I am a high-end IT infrastructure guy (completely technical and not a manager) and am all about progress and new technology. BUT, I am also a snob when it comes to what I think are poor decisions or omissions on any user interface regardless of the platform. I think that this is one of those cases where a traditionally key feature was left out that should be there for ease of use.

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lol...kinda made it sound hard didn't you? touch contacts it brings up your last view so i keep mine on favorites. it shows you your top 7 favorites(sorry not 8,if you want te 8th one you have to scroll down one)...you don't ave to read through anything...simply touch and your calling.

so.....

speed dial is opening the dialer and holding a number

fav's is opening contacts and touching a contact...

i've been using a cellular phone for 2 days but i did stay at a holiday inn last night

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well there's hope... htc sense has a dialer that natively supports long-press speed dialing. so, once the droid gets rooted and somebody makes a hero rom for us, we should be good to flash it and have speed dials.

but i think its BS that we should be forced to have to do that in order to have speed dials.

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Sorry, but I think you are in denial if you fail to see how it is faster (and safer) to just open the dialer and hold a button for 1 sec instead of open the dialer or contacts, go to favorties, read through the list, find the right person, and then click them to call. I've used the standard telephone keypad for 31 years and it's not like I need to look at it to use speed dial. the contacts/favorites way you suggest requires me to take my eyes off the road for 2-3 seconds at minimum, which is enough for some bad shit to happen when you are going 75mph on the beltway in houston.

Don't get me wrong, i love my droid and wouldnt go back to my BB for this alone, but I really hope I can get this traditionally basic functionality sooner than later. I've had a cell phone since I was 16 and have always used my speed dials. I've also been at the same company for 10 years now, so my speed dials have mostly stayed the same on every phone I have owned in that span...my brain is trained to flip out the phone and mash a key to get to my top 8 contacted people.

now before someone attacks me for being resistant to progress and change, know that I am all about technical advancements -- I am a high-end IT infrastructure guy (completely technical and not a manager) and am all about progress and new technology. BUT, I am also a snob when it comes to what I think are poor decisions or omissions on any user interface regardless of the platform. I think that this is one of those cases where a traditionally key feature was left out that should be there.

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I fail to see how any of this is easier then having a 1 touch dial on your desktop. Really if we wanna scwabble over amount of buttons pressed

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A new thread that came up with a much better solution, and my response:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Barbara
I created a folder on my desktop called "speed dial". I can create a shortcut for any contact to click and call. I can put them in that folder and they are in there by name. That's my speed dial solution.

My response:
Barbara you are BRILLIANT!!! this is the best, least memory-consuming, least laggy solution yet! I was using the Easy Dialer app but your way is soooo much better. Thanks so much!!!

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Oct 6, 2009

I'm a fan of Easy Dialer; been using it since day 1 and have been pleased with it; ad-supported version for me, but you can pay to get rid of ads;

yeah I just tried SuperDial and I like Easy Dialer better; give it a whirl and lemee know what you think.

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FWIW, SuperDial and Easy Dialer have very different goals...

Easy Dialer allows you to create a list of favorites w/large buttons that you can dial with one tap.

SuperDial is a T9 dialer that allows you to find a contact by tapping their name or number out on the dial pad...as more characters are tapped the contact list quickly narrows down to contacts that fit (e.g., type keys with W-h-i-t on them and the list narrows to contacts with White, Whitmore, Whittington, etc.) SuperDial is a great feature for former Blackberry users who want to get back that dialing feature from the BB.

I use both - Easy Dialer for frequently called numbers, and Super Dial for ones that I don't call often enough that they are on favorites.

The shortcut method referred to below is simple, and I've used it...the weakness I found were that 1) Unless your contacts all have photos, the dialing icons all look alike, so picking the one you want out of it is not as easy as it could be when you can't give the phone your complete attention. 2) I found that when I changed home screen apps, I "lost" all my dialing shortcuts...they are still there on the stock home screen, but not on the 3rd party ones. So had to set them up all over again...for those of us playing w/several home screen apps this quickly becomes very tedious. (Only dxTop appears to actually import shortcuts, icons, and widgets when it is installed, which is nice.)

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I've been using a G1 for about a year now and just had a use for this speed dial function and was pissed that it is incapable of using the traditional speed dial.

Ironically, what caused me to identify this shortcoming of the G1, also provided me with a solution. I was playing with the blueant bt that I just received and noticed the voice command allows you to use the basic speed dial that every phone has..."cool, let me set this up", I said! I researched for 10 min before I found this thread and realized that this phone is incapable of such a basic function. Luckily, and after playing with more of the voice commands on the blueant, I realized that it can store numbers and dial directly from the bt..."sweet"! So, I'm not as pissed that android doesn't have this basic functionality. I actually think the blueant implementation is much better than touching speed dial on the phone. Once its programmed in the blueant, all you have to do it touch the button, then you will be quickly prompted with "say a command", then all you have to say is "call speed dial #". Very nice, all without touching the phone!

I know this may not be a solution for most as it requires purchasing a bt headset, but if you are in the market for a bt, I would definitely recommend the blueant. I actually didn't even need a bt as I have been using nothing but the jawbones including the prime for the past 4 years, but i got the blueant for so cheap and may begin to use it full time. I don't think the quality (especially the noise cancellation) of the blueant is as good as my jawbone prime, but the speed dial and other voice commands make it a formidable contender

Oct 6, 2009

Select the number and the speeddial to assign it to. One weakness is that it doesn't identify the number type for the numbers (no "Mobile" or "Work" labels) so make sure you know which number you want to assign from the contact.